Congressman Lucas Hopeful Over Next Farm Bill’s Impact On Oklahoma

The center of a lame duck session, with a funding deadline looming, may appear an odd time for a member of Congress to be speaking excitedly about attending to work on the subsequent Farm Invoice, however maybe not, if that member is an Oklahoma farmer and rancher Frank Lucas.

Within the subsequent Congress, which will probably be Rep. Lucas’s fifteenth time period, the Roger Mills County Republican is more likely to chair the necessary Science, Area, and Expertise Committee and additionally be the senior Republican on the Home Monetary Companies Committee, however he sees one other attainable committee project as simply, if no more, necessary.

“My legacy committee is agriculture,” stated Rep. Lucas (R-OK3) in an interview final week, “and I’ve requested to, and I count on to, be returning to that as a result of subsequent 12 months would be the every-five-year Farm Invoice course of, the 2023 Farm Invoice.”

The Farm Invoice supplies a security internet, Lucas says, to verify American farmers and ranchers can elevate the meals and fiber we’d like, within the healthiest, most inexpensive, and most plentiful style.

“We don’t need to reinvent the wheel,” stated Lucas. “We take the ‘14 invoice that turned the ‘18 invoice, which is able to now hopefully grow to be the ‘23 invoice, and we’ll make changes — enter prices have modified dramatically.”

And there have been different modifications for the reason that present Farm Invoice was written. Notably, Lucas says, Covid-19 and the warfare in Ukraine uncovered vulnerabilities in U.S. and world provide chains and the necessity, for instance, for reforms to the meatpacking business.

“State-inspected vegetation, as we’ve got in Oklahoma, are simply nearly as good as federally-inspected,” Lucas acknowledged, “however you usually can’t promote your product throughout the state line as a result of it doesn’t have a federal stamp. How will we increase the meat inspection program on the federal degree in order that extra packing vegetation — competitors to the massive boys, so to talk — are capable of promote their merchandise across the nation? Points like that.”

Points, Lucas says, that historical past has proven matter to a broad, bipartisan majority of Congress. Passing payments like this, he says, finally ends up being an train in ‘working the center.’

“As a result of the onerous left and the onerous proper by no means vote for them,” Lucas defined. “In case you can’t get a majority within the center, there’s not going to be a Farm Invoice. So, every little thing I care about requires the method working, and this place functioning, and I’m going to do every little thing I can to make that occur.”

Lucas says, with parts of the 2018 Farm Invoice set to start expiring subsequent fall, his hope is to get the brand new invoice throughout the end line by October 1, 2023